OCCASIONAL PAPER UPDATESYour Occasional Paper due date has been officially moved to after your Winter Break.

NEW DUE DATE:In class, Thursday, January 16th (1st & 5th period)In class, Friday, January 17th (2nd, 4th, 6th period)

OVERVIEW & GENERAL INFO

See the back of this page for the original project expectations that were given to you.

This will also be posted on the weebly page: www.ESATEnglish10.weebly.com

Please e-mail me if you have any questions: llarson-long@laalliance.orgllarsonlong@gmail.com

HOW WILL YOU BE GRADED?

Before you leave for break, you will be given a choice of several rubrics that each focus on one standard (a few examples: figurative language, organization, sensory details, grammar, etc). You will have the opportunity to personally select the standard that you would like you paper to be assessed on.

QUESTIONS?

NOTES:

PROJECT EXPECTATIONSOriginal Message:

You are about to become a participant in the long-standing literary tradition of “occasional” writing.

As the name implies, occasional writing is undertaken to celebrate or mark a particular occasion in someone’s life.  Often the subject is a milestone of some sort.  For our purposes, the milestones can be the obvious major events in your life, or even better, the ordinary events—the things we often pay little attention to, which are often the most important stuff of our lives.

The OP is a short paper that written in response to an occasion of your choosing. It is a personal essay that has several purposes.  One is to provide you with an opportunity to practice a type of writing other than the literary analysis.  Another purpose is to allow you to generate your own writing topics and to hone your skills in development, elaboration, and coherence.  A third purpose is to encourage you to pay attention to the details of your daily life and the world around you.

Your paper should tell a story, but it should also do more than that.  Make a point.  Teach a lesson. Avoid preaching or attacking people, instead share an experience. Connect to something universal through the details of your life. Let us experience those details through your use of sensory imagery, analogies, and figurative language.  Bring us into your story.

Write your paper as soon after the occasion as you can.  It will be more fresh in your mind.  Details tend to evaporate from our memories as time passes.

Your paper should be 3-4 pages long to give you ample space to develop your thoughts.  It should be typed, double-spaced in a 10-12 point font.

You must write at least one OP by the end of the marking period.     You should write your paper whenever a suitable occasion arises, and prior to the last week of the marking period.  When you have a paper ready, you will read your paper aloud and get some feedback from the class.  The reading is an important part of the OP process.  Papers must be read aloud in order for all of us to benefit from the sharing of your thoughts.

Your grade on this paper will be a reflection of the degree to which you take advantage of the opportunities that the assignment offers.  It should be the best piece of work you can do, especially since you will have an audience of your peers, but your grade will not be based on the mechanical success of your essay.

Be creative.  Experiment with language.  Use this opportunity to do something that really reflects you, your voice, and your ideas.